Just found a good website, that shows a keg converted into a fermentor

Here is the URL: http://users.adelphia.net/~aken75/Fermenter%20Lid/Fermenter%20Lid.html

Here are some pics...

Greetings all,

Just a quick update on the club.

One): A new member has been warmly welcomed to the club, Julie "The Brew Mistress"
Two): We have recently acquired 4 New Beer kegs to convert into brewing equipment. Much thanks to Julie for finding them for the club!!!! She truly is the a welcome addition to the club!

Next, what to do with the new kegs???? We have 5 kegs, now, One already in service as a brew kettle, I think we should convert another keg to a brew kettle, and the other two can serve as mash tuns. Which leaves us with one left....
What to do with the last keg? Convert it into a Fermentor?

The latest batches of American Amber Ale are done, and Julie's Batch of Belgium Wit is also finished. We have 12 Gals of Crimson Oktoberfest to bottle and another batch of lager to make....

Peace
All

PS here is a photo from the last brew day at my place. This is the Crimson Oktoberfest going into the primary. Photo courtesy thanks to Julie for remembering a camera, and to take pictures

Labor Day weekend brewing:

Hey all, just a quick update, on all the brews we have been working on.
First the fridge, with the new Johnson’s Temperature controller has been keeping the fridge at a perfect 55 degrees!
Today, the Cinco De Mayo, German Oktoberfest beer is being bottled, and put up to age, the Fosters clone lager will be racked and then lagered for a month or so.
Last night we racked the Cinnamon Mead, and the Chocolate Mead, and started the White Riesling wine for the wife.
A taste test of the cinnamon mead, and specific gravity check, showed an SG of 1.020 (pretty sweet still) and very tasty. A test of the Chocolate mead, showed a lower gravity of 1.010 and while still a little sweet, and chocolatety, it has improved considerably. We are planning an addition of Chocolate extract when the mead clears some more, and that should make it taste wonderful! The alcohol content is also very nice, not to hot and not too mild.
And finally a batch of plain sweet mead is going into the primary, 15 lbs of honey, some yeast nutrients, and spring water, and champagne yeast.
That’s it for the weekend, and this is truly a Labor of Love!

Johnsons Refrigerator Tempurature controls has been recieved and installed on the Lagering Fridge! Woot Woot!

And at present the fridge is at a balmy 55 degrees F. and holding steady. Perfect Lagering temps. and It has made it so much easier for me now that I do not have to run back and forth to keep turning the fridge on and off.

Next step is to bottle the lagers, and get them conditioned.

Peace Sisters
G

Hello all,

Another update on the two experimental meads I have fermenting. I tasted the Chocolate mead, and WOW was it dry! I guess 10lbs of honey is not near enough honey for my sweet tooth. Also the chocolate flavor while there was very week, and not even close to being palitable. So i racked out of the carbouy, into a clean primary fermentor, added 5 more lbs of honey, added a packet of Red-Star Schamagne yeast, and put a lid on it.

So i did the same for the cinnamon mead. You this was also very dry, and had a very strong cinnamon flavor, So I added 5 lbs of honey, tried another sample and it was much sweeter, and very tasty. Added the red-star yeast, and put the lid on it, and put it back.

I will let these re-start fermenting, and let them settle down for a month and give them another try. I will adjust the flavor accordingly. I do plan on adding some chocolate extract to bring out the flavor of the Chocolate mead. But I will wait to see how much more this mead ferments. I may have to add more honey to this one to get it right.

Peace

Greetings Fellow brewers....

Just an update on the two Experimental meads.

After cleaning as sterilizing two carboys, I began with the Chocolate mead.

I removed the lid, and was instantly hit with a not so wonderful smell. Kinda putrid smelling but after a few more minutes, you could tell there was a chocolate smell with yeast tones. I did a SG, check and the mead was at .993, a quick taste and ieven though it was not a pleasant taste, you could taste the chocolate, and only a tiny hint of the honey. I am hoping that as I have read in other recipies, this will age, and begin to taste better as time goes on. Based on the OG and the FG, the alcohol content is over 10%.

I put the airlock on the Chocolate Mead Carboy and began racking the Cinnamon/Apple Mead. Removing the lids was a lot better smelling than the Chocolate but still green smelling of yeast, and cinnamon. A SG reading of .990 was reached, and a taste test was much better than the Chocolate too. Very High Cinnamon flavour, almost a hot cinnamon aftertaste, and some honey flavors, almost no Apple flavours were detected.

Well I put the Airlocks on the recently racked meads, and began figuring out if I should add some extracts to fix the flavors, but figured its way to early to do anything drastic yet.

I will report back over the next year to hopefully provide you with better taste tests, and results of these two meads. I am also going to put up a batch of Plain Honey Mead, and a back up mead, just in case.

Peace all
G

Just wanted to share a couple of meads I started yesterday afternoon. After I finished bottling up a German Marzen Oktoberfest beer, I began cooking up the ingredients for two meads, one a Cinnamon / Apple mead, and the other a Chocolate Mead.

The ingredients for the two meads are as follows:

Cinnamon / Apple Mead

20 sticks of Cinnamon
50oz of Unfiltered, Pasturized 100% Apple Juice
2 Cups of Strong regular Luizanne Tea
5tsp of Super ferment (yeast nutrients)
1tsp Bentonite
10lbs of Clover honey
5gal of spring water
1 packet of dry Champagne yeast


Chocolate Mead

16oz. of Hersheys Unsweatened Cocoa powder
5tsp of Super ferment (yeast nutrients)
1cup of dextrose
1tsp Bentonite
10lbs of Clover Honey
5Gal of Spring water
1 packet of dry Champagne yeast.

Instructions for Cinnamon / Apple Mead:

In one gallon of water boil / steap all 20 cinnimon stick for 15 minutes (this makes the house smell wonderful BTW), remove and strain the sticks from the Cinnamon water (tea).
in 2 cups of warmed water (use a microwave) i disolved 1 tsp of bentonite. ( i am doing this to help in the clearing stages, something i do when I make regular wines, im experimienting so I will let you know how it helps if any).
I poured the disolved bentonite into 1 gal of spring water in the primary fermentor, and then added the hot cinnamon water(tea) to the primary fermentor. (about two gallons in there now). I quickly brewed up 2 cups of regular tea in the microwave, and added that to the primary fermentor. I then added 5tsp of Super ferment to the solution. And then slowly stired in the honey. I added water to the honey containers, shook them up good, to disolve the remaing honey, and poured that into the primary. Added enough of the remaining water to bring the mead to the 6 gal mark. Primary Starting Gravity was 1.080. sprinkled the champagne yeast over the top of the mead after aerating for several minutes, put on the lid and filled the airlock with vodka.

Instructions for Chocolate Mead:

In one gallon of water, I disolved, and brought to a boil the entire 16oz container of Cocoa Powder. You must be very careful when bringing this much chocolate, to a boil. Use a very large pot if you can find, to avoid boil-over!!! I had a couple of close calls. once the Chocoalte is at a low-med boil, after 15 minutes start to skim the gook off the top of the chocolate, and discard. what you want to see is a nice smooth, clear top of boiling chocolate. (not sure why, its is just what I had read in the past, so I did the same). I then put 1 gal of cool spring water into the primary fermentor. I disolved 1tsp of bentonite into 2 cups of warm water, and added that to the fermentor. I then added 5tsp. of the super ferment to the fermentor. Then carefully I poured the boiling chocolate into the fermentor. I added another gallon of water to the fermentor, and slowly stirred in the 10lbs of honey. Again I rinsed the honey containers with water to disolved the final bits and poured that into the fermentor. I topped up to the 6gal mark, and took a SG reading. It was a bit low, only 1.070, so I quickly disolved 1 cup of dextrose into 1 cup of boiling water and added that to the primary. That brought the SG up to about 1.078. I aerated the mead Must and sprinkled on the champagne yeast. put the lid on and affixed a vodka filled airlock and set both batches of mead in a corner of the livinging room.

Last night I noticed some fermentation going on with the Apple/cinnamon, and a little with the Chocolate. By this morning, the Apple/Cinnamon was not fermenting very fast, but the Chocolate was going like gangbusters. I will keep you up to date as they both progress.

Peace all.

Report on the Marzen Octoberfest beer:

WOW, I racked the lager into carboys, to begin the lagering phase of the brew. Of course I had to give a taste, and let me tell you. WOW it is awsome! better than most store bought lagers!!! hands down my best brew so far.

I let the carboys set out for a day to do a diacetyl rest, and I put it in the fridge the next day. I will be slowly dropping the tempurature down to 33 degrees over the next few weeks, and then I will either crank up another batch of lager or do a simple prime with corn sugar. I hope to do the former and use the kruesen to bottle condition this batch.

Take care

Report on U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest:

Hello gang, just a quick report on the U-boat Oktoberfest 10 gal batch. The beer has been fermenting nicely at the frigged temperature of 45 degrees for the past 3 weeks. I decided to pull the beer from the fridge to do a diacetyl rest. After 24 hours I took a Specific Gravity reading on Sunday, and it was at 1.020 about half way from the starting gravity. I think I will let it go another week or two to see if we can get the gravity down near 1.007-1.013. After taking the reading I decided to do a taste test, and WOW let me tell you it was very much like a light German Lager if there ever was one. Still a bit sweet but it still has some fermenting to do! There is a light hint of hop aroma and some bitterness, but that should age out once it has been in the bottles a while.

After we get near the target ending gravity, I will rack to carboys, and begin the long temperature lowering Lagering phase till we get to 33 degrees F. in about a month, then we will bottle.

I am debating on bottling with priming sugar or creating a Kräusen to add to the brew to do bottle conditioning. If I decide to do a Kräusen then I will make a stronger batch of Oktoberfest at 11.5 gallons because I will use approx 1.5 gal to add to the current batch of beer. This way I will have the second batch hopefully at the target OG of 1.056-1.060, and will have a batch in bottles as another batch is fermenting. I don’t expect the current batch to last long after tasting it last night.

Well until next week, peace and Happy brewing!

Kettle Maintenance

Hey sisters, just a quick update on the kettle maintenance performed on Saturday. I purchased a stainless steel ball valve, and take-up screen (Bazooka screen) to filter whole hops from the wort as we transferred the wort to the waiting fermentors.

Once the parts arrived I realized I did need a short length of copper tubing, and a threaded fitting so the screen could be attached on the inside of the kettle to the new ball valve. So a trip out to Home Depot began. Once there I found the food-grade solder I needed, a length of copper tubing 5’ of it, I wish I could have just bought a 1 foot length. And I found the threaded fitting to fit the copper tubing.

After digging around in the shop I realized I could not find my torch to weld the copper tubing to the threaded fitting so another run out to the hardware store, and I bought another welding kit with another gas cylinder. Oh well you can never have enough gas right? (Sorry ladies)

I measured the inside of the kettle, and cut the appropriate length of tubing, sanded the ends, and the insides of the Bazooka screen and the copper threaded fitting. Lit the torch and applied flux to the joints. A few minutes later the pieces were nicely welded/soldered together.

Now for the drilling part, to install the Bazooka screen and the ball valve to the kettle it required a 7/8” hole near the bottom of the keg. I marked a spot high enough to keep the screen out of the trub once it settles in the keg, and in between the two handles so it would not get in the way if carried. 10 gallons of wort gets very heavy! Try 80 pounds heavy! I started with a 3/16” drill and drilled a hole on the mark, then I switched to a Step Drill bit. This drill bit is shaped like a cone, and gets bigger and bigger at the base. So as you drill it will make the hole larger, the biggest part of the drill bit was 7/8” so basically I drilled until I was at the biggest point. I test fit the pieces together and they were perfect.

So a little clean up on the inside of the kettle (remove the metal shavings, and the oil used to lubricate the drill bits) and put the parts together. The pictures are of the final assembly of the brew kettle ball valve and Bazooka screen. This will make transferring the wort to the fermentors a snap! Not to mention without any mess, or heaven forbid, spilled wort/beer!

The U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest is coming along fine...


The starting gravity was at 1.040-1.042 it would have been higher but we spilled a bunch trying to get it from the boil kettle to the fermentors. One word of advise, never handle boiling wort, or try pouring it out of your brew kettle in your stocking feet.


The recipe for the U-boat Marzen Oktoberfest is as follows...


This is for a 10gal extract recipe



10 lbs. DME Light
2 lbs. DME Amber
2 lbs Munich Malt
1.5 lbs Vienna Malt
2 oz. Hallertauer Hops
1 oz. Tetnang Hops
2 tsp. Irish Moss


2 vials White labs German Marzen/Oktoberfest lager yeast #820 or one vial and a good starter

Place cracked grains in large grain bag, steep in 7.5 gal. of water at 155 degrees F. for 45 minutes. Remove bag and drain, do not squeeze grains. Add Dried Malt Extract to the water and raise temperature to boiling.

after 5 minutes of boiling add 1 oz. of the Hallertauer Hops, set the timer for 40 mintes.

After the 40 minutes add the Irish Moss, Set the timer for 15 minutes. After 3 minutes have passed add the other ounce of Hallertauer Hops. When there is 5 minutes left on the timer add the Tetnang Hops, let boil for 2 more minutes, and turn off the heat. Pour into Ice filled 5 gal primary fermentors I used 1ea. 16lb bag per fermentor you could also use 2ea. 8 pound bags. Try to put in equal amounts of hot wort into each fermentor. This should bring the temp down to Yeast pitching temps and should be just over the 5 gal mark. Then I let the wort settle for 20 minutes, and racked each 5 gal batch into another clean and sanitized 5 gal fermentor. I did this to leave any leftover trub, hops and gook behind so the beer wont be sitting on this for the 3 weeks of primary fermenting. You can choose to omit that step if you have a good straining system when you pour the hot wort into the 5 gal primaries. You may also have your own system for getting the wort cool, my advise is get the wort as cool as you can as fast as you can. So the final hops aroma won't get diffused by the wort continuing to cook.

Once you have the wort in the primary and the temp down to pitching temps go ahead and pitch the yeast. I used one vial of yeast put into a one gal. starter 4 nights before I was going to brew. This gave me the time to build up enough yeast to pitch for the 10 gallons, I was going to make and gave me the opportunity to make another starter, and put some yeast away for another brew session. To make the started I used 1 pound of DME light added to 4 cups of water. I boiled this for 15 minutes, and then put into a sink full of ice cubes and cool water. I put the lid on the pot during the cooling to prevent contamination.

Once it was cool enough I added the vial of white labs 820 Oktoberfest/Marzen lager yeast, poured it into a 1 gallon carboy, afixed the Air-lock, and let it sit on the counter at room temp for the 3 days and 4 nights. The starter made it to krausen and then started to fall off by the time I was ready to pitch into the U-boat Oktoberfest Saturday morning.

So back to the U-boat, I decanted most of the wort from the started, and swirled up the yeast to get it into suspension, I poured about half a cup into my other starter ,then poured half of the rest into one 5 gal. fermentor and the other half into the other 5 gal. fermentor. I left them out in the garage over night where the temps were in the 60's. Fermentation had started by the morning so I put the 2 fermentors into my lagering fridge and set the temp. to 55 degrees. I also put in the starter in the fridge because it will be a while before I will make the next lager beer batch. And I want to keep the starter in the fridge as long as possible.

More on the progress of the U-boat as it progresses later.

The Bismark Hellas Starter Yeast

Well the starter yeast is going great, it has been sitting on the counter since yesterday evening, and last night and this morning it was bubbling like gang-busters. So we are well on our way to having a nice 1 gal Starter for the double batch of Bismark Hellas I will be making Saturday.

Because the Superbowl is on Sunday, I will have to brew this myself. but it is the least I can do for the club so we will have some more yummy lager in a couple months. :)

More after the brew session

Unsinking the Bismark Hellas

After hours of pouring over websites, and hints and tips from other
brewers nation/web-wide I have determined that the Bismark Hellas
probably sunk because of under-pitched yeast.

For a Lager to be "Great" it needs to start out its fermentation at
low temperatures which I attempted to do by pitching the yeast, and
getting the fermentors right into the fridge, and down to lagering
temps 45-55 degrees F. Starting the Lager at such low temeratures
will prevent unwanted esters from developing at all, leaving you with
a crisp dry lager beverage.

However the amount of yeast pitched needs to have quite a bit of
live/active yeast cells to begin fermentation right away. A single
vial of White Labs lager yeast only has about 100,000 yeast cells and
active viable cells in the neighborhood of 35-50,000 cells. Based on
what I have gleaned from other brewers and websites a 5 gal. batch of
lager needs approx 200,000 cells to begin a good fermentation at
lager temps.

The White labs vial actually say that the wort needs to remain at
room temperatures (70 degrees) until fermentation begins. Usually a
day or 2 on average. I in fact did not give the yeast this needed
warmth to begin it propagation, because I did not want and unwanted
esters to form, and did not give the yeast cells enough time to
divide and create a colony big enough to sustain good fermentation.
So by under pitching and putting the wort right into the lager fridge
the wort did not have a chance to get fermenting before the creepy
micro-organisms took over and probably killed the yeast.

So I am making a yeast starter based on tips from other brewers to
build up a large colony of yeast cells so I will have the number of
yeast cells needed to begin lagering right away. Basically I took 1lb
of DME plain light malt and added it to 1 gal of tap water. Cooked it
for about 15 minutes on the stove with the added DME at a boil and
then cooled it in a sink of cool water, till I could pitch the vial
of Marzen/Oktoberfest Munich Lager yeast. I put on an air-lock and it
is resting on the kitchen counter at room temp. This morning I
noticed very slow fermentation so I can guess that the yeast is
currently propagating the colony and dividing and making more yeast
cells.

I hope to have a nice big colony of lager yeast by Saturday when I
will try to recreate the batch that sunk last time, a double batch of
Bismark Hellas. I will also be adding more of the EXTRA-LIGHT DME as
the last batch never reached the target beginning SG of 1.040 and I
had to pitch in a pound of dextrose to reach the SG last time.

So this time I am going to buy an additional 2 lbs of Extra-light DME
and pitch that in with the rest of the ingredients. I will also try
to add Munich Malt to the grain bill if the brew store has some.

Check back next week to see what the Brewmaster comes up with and see
if the Bismark will again take to the brewing seas...

The Bismark sunk :(

As is typical with boats, they do occasionaly sink, and unfortunatly
the double batch of Bismark sunk and went sour.

what happend? not sure, we got the wort down to room tempurature, we
pitched the yeast, and I put it in the lager(fridge) The primary
fermentors bubbled a little and then nothing. Stuck fermentation? not
sure. I think next time I will create a yeast starter for the lagers,
and then pitch. In the past I have pitched the yeast and let it stay
out at room tempurature for a day or so until the fermentation was
going well, then into the lager fridge. I was hoping I could reduce
any dycylic esters by moving to lager temps as quick as possible. But
the White Labs yeast probably isn't enough yeast cells to get
fermentation going strong enough unless a starter is used?

I am going to do some research on this and hopefully find the answer.